Saturday, August 16, 2008

Weeping At The Wheel: Crushingly Sad Songs

npr brings us crushingly sad songs

Locusts

Artist: The Frames

Album: Burn the Maps

The Frames' Glen Hansard has a way of ripping out the listener's heart and massaging it tenderly before returning it in better condition than he found it. In "Locusts," he contemplates the emotional wreckage around him and ultimately opts to flee -- hey, just like you're doing! "I'm moving off / I'm packing up," he sings, adding, "I'm willing to be wrong." Fortunately, in Hansard's music, glimmers of redemption and contentment pop up in the grimmest of moments: "The bells that ring in hope are swinging from the ropes / we thought we'd one day perish on." That's the spirit!

Astronaut

Artist: David Mead

Album: Wherever You Are

A criminally under-appreciated singer-songwriter, David Mead is at his best when he's ruminating wistfully on places he's had to abandon or pass by altogether. Mead followed his 2004 sleeper masterpiece Indiana -- which uses the titular state as a metaphor for the space between home and where we find ourselves -- with the similarly winsome yearning of an EP called Wherever You Are. In "Astronaut," Mead laments leaving a city he loves, but adds a bit of motivation for his departure: "Then you tell me a lie and say you'll miss me when I'm gone." It's a painful roundabout admission that, while the places we leave exert a gravitational pull, they can never miss us the way we miss them.

Casimir Pulaski Day

Artist: Sufjan Stevens

Album: Illinois

Here's hoping that the specifics of "Casimir Pulaski Day" don't apply to your own tearful drive: In all likelihood, you're not a young man who falls in love at Bible Study and questions his faith after watching the object of his unconsummated love die of bone cancer. If you are? Wow, sorry to hear that. But either way, it isn't necessary to fully relate to Sufjan Stevens' ornate ballad: It just sounds like sadness, what with its solemn trumpet and its cooing mourners and, well, the fact that, in the song, someone dies of bone cancer. If you're sad, "Casimir Pulaski Day" isn't going to cheer you up; let's leave it at that.

Our Hell

Artist: Emily Haines

Album: Knives Don't Have Your Back

The five stages of grief end with acceptance, right? In "Our Hell," Metric's Emily Haines reflects on a relationship and declares, however unconvincingly, that "our hell is a good life." It's a wrenchingly hollow victory -- taking comfort in the fact that an awful existence is worth striving for -- but as you drift along some dusty highway, "Our Hell" at least helps you count your blessings. And, of course, it'll remind you of their insignificance, in the process helping you overthrow the tyranny of hope. "I tried to save you," Haines sings, "but it can't be done."

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

Artist: Stars

Album: Set Yourself on Fire

A bittersweet narrative unfolds in Stars' "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead," during which former lovers experience an awkward and accidental reunion before applying revisionist history to their difficult past. She's philosophical about their relationship, while he obscures his feelings beneath bogus bravado, but their ambivalence and sadness coalesce around one breathtaking line near the end: "Live through this / and you won't look back." No matter how bad it gets, at least "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" helps you take a measure of solace in the fact that memories fade.